Maybe they’ll set up a gulag in flyover country.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
How We Regained Our Rights
Steve Chapman explains:
Gun control didn’t work…Laws allowing concealed weapons proliferated–with no ill effects…The Second Amendment got a second look.
Yes, it was pretty much that simple. Of course, a lot of people (like Juan Williams) will persist in the delusion, in the face of all the counter evidence, that gun control works, and that increasing availability will result in a blood bath. But at least now, they won’t be able any more to enact their delusions into laws that affect the rest of us.
The View From Obamaland
Who dare call it fascism? Jeffrey Lord does:
…when faced with a disagreeable problem (in this case the lack of jobs) the answer for Obama always seems to get back to the manipulation of the political process to achieve the desired result.
Are Obamalanders uncomfortable with the free-market driven success of talk radio? Then they will “figure out ways to use the political process” to shut it down. In the case of talk radio, how else to explain the threatening Reid-Obama letter to Rush Limbaugh’s business partner? How else does one explain the attempt to retrieve the “Fairness Doctrine” from the dustbin of history? These are nothing more or less than the “use of the political process” to subvert someone else’s freedom. Period.
Are Obamaland followers hostile to oil? Do they hate SUVs? Do they think you have no right to heat or cool your own home beyond what they consider politically correct? Do they think you should pay $5 — or $6 or $7 or $8 or more — for gas at the pump to ensure you conform to the Obamaland world-view? Yes, they do think all of this and their Obamaland answer is inevitable. They will “use the political process” to stop drilling off shore in its tracks. So too with stopping the use of oil shale or ANWR or anything else that even hints at allowing average Americans their basic freedom to drive whatever vehicle wherever they damn well please whenever they damn well please. In Obamaland it is not only perfectly acceptable, it is gospel from the secular bible that they must use the political process to stop refineries from being built, to keep nuclear power plants from being built, to keep coal from being burned. Use the political process to forcibly mandate the temperature inside every single American home. As a matter of fact, why not just go all the way and nationalize the oil companies — this actually being suggested by Obamaland’s New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey.
He also has the full quote from Obama that I’d missed part of the first time around:
“We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in the desert or we’re living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us. That’s not leadership.”
This is economic idiocy. Why in the world would energy consumption be expected to correlate with population? Yes, we have much higher per-capita energy usage than much of the world (e.g., Africa). But we also produce much greater wealth per capita than much of the world, and much of that wealth goes to make the world wealthier, in many ways. The notion that we should only use energy in proportion to our population is economic ignorance of the first rank. In other words, it’s exactly what I would expect from a Democrat, and particularly Obama. Though to be fair, there are a lot of economically ignorant Republicans as well, including their current standard bearer, by his own admission. But unlike Obama, he at least admits it.
The Economics Of Longevity
Some thoughts, over at Fight Aging.
Truth In Advertising
“The key to defeating the initiative is to keep it off the ballot in the first place. That’s the only way we’re going to win.” The Left, as you know, favors democracy, power to the people, and nondiscrimination, except when it doesn’t.
Indeed. Which is all too often.
A Tri-Cameral Legislature?
Has the Supreme Court abandoned its role as a third branch of government?
It often seems that way.
The Thirties Again?
Arthur Silber has concerns about the Obama cult:
People had better wake the hell up, and they had better study some history very damned fast. I have sometimes remarked, and I repeat the warning here, that the twentieth century was a nonstop train of horrors — yet in one sense, the most terrible and horrifying aspect of the twentieth century is that we learned absolutely nothing from it.
Among the horrors of the twentieth century were several notable leaders who initiated events that led to slaughter and destruction on an ungraspably monumental scale. These charismatic leaders evoked a response from their followers almost identical to that called forth by Obama. These leaders specialized in “personal stories of political conversion.” Doesn’t anyone see the connection? Doesn’t anyone remember any of this?
We’re Not Ready
It’s been a hundred years since Tonguska, but we’re still not taking the threat seriously.
We’re Not Ready
It’s been a hundred years since Tonguska, but we’re still not taking the threat seriously.
Practice What You Preach
Hillary!’s supporters are going to love this bit of hypocrisy:
The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama’s staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama’s staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)
McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain’s staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain’s office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.
The Obama campaign did not respond to written questions submitted on the matter Thursday by Cybercast News Service .
No, I imagine not.